BOEING PRESIDENT BILL ALLEN GAMBLED in the early 1950s, when he directed the company to invest $16 million in the Dash 80 jet prototype before a single customer had committed to buying the next-generation airplanes it would spawn: the KC-135 military tanker and the 707 airliner. When Pan Am placed an order for 20 707s in October 1955, Allen won the bet. Led by Maynard Pennell, a manager on the B-29 Superfortress, the 707 program made rapid transatlantic crossing available even to middle-class Americans while supplying an instantly recognizable symbol of American ingenuity. It had the largest passenger cabin in the sky, with 100 windows, enough that every row of seats would have one. no matter how the seats were arranged. Pan Am's Juan Trippe offered to pay Boeing a bonus of $25,000 for each month ahead of schedule that Pan Am took delivery. He got the first production 707 just under eight months after the design's first flight, on December 20, 1957. The future was in no mood to wait.
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